RPT-FEATURE-It's not just the economy: Why football and sharks can affect elections

October 06, 2012|Reuters

* Beyond campaigns, many factors determine how people vote

* For some, knowing the issues is too much of a hassle

* Presidents held accountable for things they can't control

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - On the Saturday before theNov. 6 election, President Barack Obama might want to root forOhio State University's football team when it takes on hishome-state University of Illinois. A win by the Buckeyes couldboost his chances of carrying Ohio, a crucial battlegroundstate.

Obama can take heart that Florida beachgoers haven'tsuffered from a spate of shark attacks this year, which couldhave hurt his prospects there. On the other hand, the brutaldrought that has gripped much of the Midwest could make ittougher for the president to win Iowa.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan famously asked Americans to basetheir votes on whether they were better off than they had beenfour years earlier - a mantra repeated this year by Obama'srival, Republican Mitt Romney.

But a growing body of research indicates that many Americansvote based on how they're feeling on that particular day - andthat if they're happy, it can be good news for incumbents.Voters' feelings can hinge on factors beyond the control of anypolitician, from the weather to the play of local sports teams.

Voters typically know how the economy has performed over thepast six months, but not the past four years, researchers say.Many aren't aware of major political developments, let alonecandidates' policy views. The daily twists and turns of thecampaign have little impact.

"You might imagine there's an ideal world in some peoples'heads where everyone votes on policy and knows what thecandidates and parties stand for," said Gabriel Lenz, apolitical science professor at the University of California,Berkeley. "I think we're pretty sure we're not in that world."

Surveys have shown for decades that a significant number ofvoters know little about politics. This year appears to be noexception.

Nearly half of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center inJuly didn't know that Republican Mitt Romney favors morerestrictions on abortion than Obama.

Only 40 percent knew that Republicans control the House ofRepresentatives - a crucial piece of information needed toassess the Democratic president's tenure and the partisangridlock that has plagued Washington.

Voters with strong partisan affiliations tend to know moreabout politics. But they also are more likely to retaininaccurate information if it reinforces their views.

For example, nearly one-third of Republicans polled byYouGov last January said they believed Obama was born abroad -and therefore ineligible to be president, as conspiracytheorists claim - even though Obama had released a long-formbirth certificate showing that he was born in the United States.

IGNORANT BY CHOICE

Ignorance makes sense for some voters when it comes topolitics, said George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin.

The act of voting is relatively easy, but it takes a lotmore effort to gather the amount of information needed todetermine which candidate reflects a voter's own policy views.Because any single vote is extremely unlikely to tip the outcomeof an election, many voters believe it does not make sense forthem to invest a lot of time in following a campaign, he said.

With limited time and interest, voters often rely onshortcuts to settle on a candidate, whether party affiliation ora sense that a candidate shares a voter's values.

A candidate's policy positions tend not to matter much - infact, voters are more likely to shift their own policy views ifthey don't line up with their chosen candidate than they are tovote for someone else, Lenz said.

Many others appear to treat elections as a referendum on theperformance of the incumbent.

Romney hopes voters will punish Obama for the nation's highunemployment rates and sluggish economic growth the presidenthas presided over since taking office in January 2009.

But most voters have a hard time thinking back that far. Sothey tend to look at the six months to a year before theelection as a proxy for the incumbent's term, according toresearch by Larry Bartels, a political science professor atVanderbilt University.

When incumbents have presided over robust election-yeargrowth, as in 1964 (Lyndon Johnson) and 1984 (Reagan), they havebeen re-elected handily. In years when growth has been lessrobust, the results typically have been closer.

This short-term focus has had real consequences.

Republican candidates Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, RichardNixon in 1968 and George W. Bush all owed their victories to thefact that voters either forgot or ignored strong periods ofincome growth early in the terms of their Democraticpredecessors, Bartels writes in "Unequal Democracy: ThePolitical Economy of the New Gilded Age."